Bald Guy

You do not want to live near Hanford! All you west siders stay away!

It sucks, shit glows that shouldn't, shit that should glow don't. Fish have 3 heads, and our dicks are limp and the women are frigid!

We have no fun roads, no fun roads at all.

Stay away, all of you west side people, stay the Hell away!

It's for the children!

Transported

This is quite a read. No easy answers, and the cost of not treating this like it is a crises as great as a world war will doom our civilization.

Adapted from The Uninhabitable Earth, by David Wallace-Wells, to be published on February 19 by Tim Duggan Books.

Book Excerpt: The Uninhabitable Earth by David Wallace-Wells

ShootPDX

From another Cycle Rider post comment I wrote on the Livewire:

Bottom-line is my original recommendation was to do it like VW does when leasing Ducatis, remember the Duc Scrambler $99/mo. lease? Let's do the maths on the LiveWire...MSRP=$27,999-as it turns out. Let's say I offer a factory incentive kicker of $1500 for a 36 month lease origination. HDFS wants $2K down and a measly $150/mo. payment (unheard of right?--that's roughly a payment on Japanese middleweight bike--at BEST--miles less than any ICE version Harley Product) --well that leaves a residual value of $19K on a 3-year-old EV. The question is--IS a 3-year-old EV still worth 68% of MSRP? Well--with what we've seen so far with Tesla and such leads me to believe the answer is a very probable--YES. Remember, these bikes will come back to the dealer with very minimal miles. Harley ICE products are the few bikes that are utter garage queens--decade old motorcycles with under 10K on the clock are the rule rather than the exception.

When you take the bike back you sell it at $19K (cost), but--here's what you do--you practically mandate the buyer purchase a 3-year battery warranty for ~$1K per year. A hundred underwriters will do it--why?--many many people will have 5 year old bikes still under 10-12K. Secondarily, you help keep the value of the bike high for the customer and at the same time you keep your dealer costs lower--in other words you're only selling crash parts...right?...when it comes to power/drive train...some 3rd party has to foot the bill. And they will crash them...so you'll make a mint in parts if enough units get sold.

liberpolly

Interesting. However, inexplicably only Tesla holds the resale value, other electric cars are plunging year after year. Look at this, for example: https://www.paramountmotorsnw.com/cars-for-sale

So Harley may, of course, bet on the high resale value of their e-bikes, but would it be a good bet?

liberpolly

The author is an idiot - he confuses proposed carbon tax, which most leading economists do say will cause a decrease in carbon emissions, with EU's Emissions Trading System (a.k.a. "cap and trade"), which is a bureaucratic boondoggle full of loopholes - by design, so the bureaucrats in charge of the loopholes can enrich themselves.

As a rule, I stop reading a book after the first major idiocy. Nevertheless, I stumbled upon second idiocy, where he conflates the "cost" of carbon tax - which has no cost until it's spent - with the actual cost of carbon capture, which is actually spent and sunk.

ShootPDX

I hope to hell it would. They partnered with both Mission Motors and Alta at various points in development. I would hope they at least stole, licensed, or otherwise finagled their way into decent motor and battery choices. The vehicle sounds as cool as hell...it's got that Rocketrods kind of gear whine coming up to speed.

I don't know that HD still has the brand-cachet of a Tesla...I think maybe in the 90s they certainly did...but holy shit a Tesla is a house payment. If someone told be I could have an HD-branded EV in my garage @ or around $150-ish/mo...even I would have to give it a serious look...even here in the PNW where you've got 6-7 months of decent riding weather. In SoCal...where the commute is rarely more than 50-miles one-way...gas is over 3 bucks...and you can lane-split 365-days-a-year...virtually a no-brainer...

Sentinel

i have a 2012 Leaf with 68000 miles that is good for maybe 50 miles if I dont go on the freeway. on the freeway at 65, maybe 40 miles, maybe 35.

resale on it is essentially buppkus.

they are disposable cars.

rather, they are good cars with disposable batteries.

the drive train looks like new, or it did until the state and counties started salting it. now its rusty, just like yours.

electrics are bullshit.

at least, the way we do it now.

they had electrics 100 years ago that were better than tesla is now.

swear.

liberpolly

Sweden does it right:

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/05/b...n-a-qvist.html

Transported

NPR on the Livewire.

https://www.npr.org/2019/02/13/69367...e-electric-era

307T

Jeez, this thread has been all over the map. It's nice to see it get back on topic. I agree with the NPR article above on a couple of points. First, the LiveWire is too expensive. I doubt that it costs that much to make and certainly a portion of the price is for the brand name. Good luck with that. The second thing is that the range seems awfully short. Electric motors lose range if they are pushed in speed and I suspect that Harley's range estimate is overstated unless the rider is just putting along. On the plus side, range is forecasted to be around 100 miles and many riders do just putt. Nothing I have seen about the weight but...Harley.

There was a Zero Motorcycle supermoto at The One Moto Show. Looked nice. That bike is not on their website but the Zero FX is similar. It costs less than a third of Milwaukee's offering price. Range is about 50 miles and top speed at 85. Bike tips the scales under 300 pounds.

Also at the show was a bike from a Swedish firm named Cake. This bike looked to be a trail model, not street legal in the configuration shown. The model name is the Kalk (Cake Kalk...nice alliteration) and shows a range of 50 miles and a speed of 50 MPH. Weight is about 150 pounds. 24" wheels? Good luck finding tires at your bike shop! Price is less than half of the Harley.

So there are things to choose from if you wish. As for me, I will stick with my V-twin and rationalize my environmental sins by reminding my neighbors that I gave up two strokes and Bardhal pre-mix.

MikeMikeMike

Yes you have to factor in growth, which is essentially what Qvist and Goldstein are arguing for stipulating that nuclear power is a safe and cheap solution to growing power output by 50%. The expectation that some in the environmental movement have, that we are going to scale back energy requirements, just isn't going to happen. Human flourishing requires growth, which may be a bug or a feature of humanity, but is unarguably true.

I do think it's funny whenever I read about a place with "cheap energy", and then you google, what does electricity cost is Sweden, then compare that to the cost of energy in Washington, and realize that "cheap" power in Europe is 2x what we pay here.

Oh sujets, arrêtez de vous plaindre et retournez au travail.

Parilla125

Even some of the worst milage bikes still get what an 'economy' car does but with near or better than supercar performance, are more nimble in traffic, easier to park, not to mention you get to feel the wind and get the best view in the house!
Even a Ninja 250 has '70's factory hot rod performance up to around freeway speeds with at least 5 times better milage. I really like my 'smaller' bikes but have to say the 2012 ZX14R we had was a BEAST! Could be ridden easy and smooth or smack the throttle and hold your breath. It still got in the high 30's if driven easy, would run 9 second ET's (Ricky Gadson ran a sub 9 with a stock bike) and do over 200 mph stock if flashed. 188 if not.
It makes it hard to go electric as the cost is higher, the range is not great, and they are not all that 'clean' as the power has to come from somewhere and batteries disposed of or recycled and the end of life. It IS getting better, but when I can pick up a small used motorcycle that gets 50-70 MPG for $1500-$2500 that will do freeway speeds for 150+ miles without stopping, they have some stiff competition.

liberpolly

Very true. If you count the energy used to manufacture the bike, used Ninja 300 has much smaller carbon footprint than any electric.

liberpolly

Main competition:

https://electrek.co/2019/02/13/zero-...e-strike-sr-f/

Yet to be seen in the wild...

Tripledij

I am a little tired of the teaser pics, just bring it out already.




https://electrek.co/2019/02/14/light...orcycle-motor/


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